[4] To this let me add a remarkable item about the Word from which one may conclude that inwardly the Word is divine truth itself and inmostly the Lord. When a spirit opens the Word and touches his face or dress with it, just from the contact his face or garment shines as brightly as the moon or a star, in the sight of all, too, whom he meets. It is evidence that there is nothing holier in the world than the Word.
That the Word is written throughout in correspondences may be seen in Doctrine of the New Jerusalem about Sacred Scripture, nn. 5-26; that the church's doctrine is to be drawn from the sense of the letter of the Word and confirmed thereby, nn. 50-61; that heresies can be wrested from the sense of the letter of the Word, but that it is harmful to confirm them, nn. 91-97; that the church is from the Word and is such as is its understanding of the Word, nn. 76-79.
257. The merely natural man confirms himself against divine providence because in many kingdoms where the Christian religion is accepted there are those who arrogate divine power to themselves, want to be worshiped as gods, and also invoke dead men. To be sure, they say that they have not arrogated divine power to themselves and do not wish to be worshiped as gods. Yet they say that they can open and close heaven, remit and retain sins, and so save and condemn men, and this is what is divine itself. Divine providence has no other purpose than reformation and hence salvation; this is its unceasing activity with everyone. And salvation can be effected only by acknowledgment of the divine of the Lord and by confidence that He brings salvation as man lives according to His commandments.
[2] Who cannot see that the usurpation of divine power is the Babylon described in the Apocalypse and the Babel spoken of here and there in the Prophets? It is also Lucifer in Isaiah 14, as is plain from verses 4 and 22 of that chapter, where are the words:
You shall speak this parable about the king of Babel (verse 4);
(Then), I will cut off the name and remnant of Babel (verse 22);
it is plain from this that this Babel is Lucifer, of whom it is said:
How you have fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! … For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation, at the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Isa 14:12-14).
It is well known that the same persons invoke the dead and pray to them for help. We make the assertion because such invocation was established by a papal bull, confirming the decree of the Council of Trent, in which it is openly said that the dead are to be invoked. Yet who does not know that only God is to be invoked, and not any dead person?
[3] It shall be told now why the Lord has permitted such things. Can one deny that He has done so for the sake of the end in view, namely salvation? For men know that there is no salvation without the Lord. Therefore it was necessary that the Lord should be preached from the Word and that the Christian Church should be established by this means. This could be done, however, only by leaders who would act with zeal and no others offered than those who burned with zeal out of self-love. At first this fire aroused them to preach the Lord and teach the Word. From this their first state Lucifer is called "the son of the morning" (14:12). But as they saw that they could dominate by means of the sanctities of the Word and the church, the self-love by which they were first aroused to preach the Lord broke out from within and finally exalted itself to such a height that they transferred all the Lord's divine power to themselves, leaving Him none.